Image guidance in malignant gliomas: a focused strategy.

Overview

The standard of care for malignant gliomas is maximal surgical cytoreduction followed by concurrent chemoradiation and adjuvant chemotherapy with temozolomide. Chemotherapy adds a modest improvement in overall survival. Unfortunately, tumor recurrence is the rule and typically occurs at the initial site of disease. Salvage reirradiation may be a useful approach in selected patients with recurrent glioblastoma. Image-guided technology coupled with highly conformal treatment planning techniques have allowed the safe delivery of high-dose radiotherapy in the setting of tumor recurrence. Defining the optimal combination of hypofractionated stereotactic radiotherapy with chemotherapy is under investigation. In this perspective, we examine the role of image guidance in malignant gliomas.